Animation – Planning the Setup

Today we’ve been given the brief that we’re going to produce a short animation clip from scratch. Its going to take place over the next five weeks in lesson time where each week we’ll be focusing on a different planning stage. We can produce it on anything we want as long as its no longer than 10 seconds and no shorter than five. We can use either rigs we have made (or can make) or we can use rigs that we have used previous;y, (the lamp or flour sack rigs) or any other we find off the internet. For what I’m going to do I’m producing my own.

To be able to produce this animation we need to understand and use the key elements of planning for an animation; Research, Synopsis, Treatment and Asset List. So, who is the animation for? This is what the Research will tell. The Synopsis; a brief overview of the story I’m trying to tell. The Asset List; everything I’ll need to produce my animation (backgrounds, models of everything to be interacted with and those which aren’t etc). Storyboards; to show where everything is and where it will be placed within the frame and directions of movement.

Week 1 is the research.

I’ve decided from building the truck in the previous lesson that I want my theme to be something around vehicles and I quite like the emotions that can be conveyed through them when given personalities, so the Milky Way advert and Disney’s Cars films. I’ve looked into indent videos on the internet and found several short animations which each have their own point or are a filler of some sort for programme introduction.

From these videos the TV Hits car chase and the BBC2 car ident appeal lots to me. I’ve decided to produce a short which combines the two. I’m going to produce a second model of a car in Maya and I’ll use both the car and truck to create a short car chase sequence with them both. The camera will remain static and focused in one set direction and the body of the animation will be the ‘big bad truck’ chasing the ‘small scared car’ across the screen. Much like the BBC2 ident, the vehicles will move across the screen coming in and out of frame and I’m also planning to have a section where they both appear from the back and head straight towards the camera.

As yet I’m undecided if the camera for this movement will give the illusion of being placed in the floor where the vehicles will drive over it (camera between the wheels) or whether they’ll drive into it (to create a black screen) to end the animation. At the moment I’m leaning towards the latter but it may change.

I’ve modelled the car I’ll need and also attached pivot points to it where I can rotate the car on three separate points, on the left side wheels, right side wheels and in the central body.

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